My response to a quote in the book To Ease My Troubled Mind – the authorised unauthorised history of Billy Childish that I stress I haven’t read. A friend of mine has, and phoned me last night to let me know what’s been written and quoted about the Heckel’s Horse paintings Billy and I make together. I wasn’t interviewed for this book, despite having been working in Billy’s painting studio on a weekly basis since 2013 (apart from a year off during covid) and collaborating with Billy on 150-200 paintings that hardly anyone’s seen, under the name Heckel’s Horse. Billy’s a good friend, has been amazingly helpful to me and my art and is an honest man I trust and respect. But this quote is nonsense, and has to be publicly contested. I don’t know how this quote came about, but it can’t just sit like this on record, given the lack of publication about Heckel’s Horse that currently exists. I work extremely hard on my art and music and have dedicated a large part of it to this series of paintings Billy and I have been collaborating on. I’m also a self-representing artist, so don’t have any big clout gallery representing me and my work. Publishing misleading, at the very least, information about my art and work I do with others is something I have to stand up to. Heckel’s Horse is a collaboration between myself, Edgeworth Johnstone, and Billy Childish that we’ve been working on for the past thirteen years. The quote I’m referring to in the Ted Kessler biography of Billy is:
“When they paint together, is Johnstone like the rhythm section and Childish the frontman? ‘No, I’m the guitarist, the singer, the drummer – rhythm is very important in painting. Edgeworth might play a bit of bass on it.’”